Old Market Simulator

Good game, apparently good enough for this new game "Island Market Simulator" to carbon copy it 1-1 mechanically with such precision i'd be surprised if they didn't steal code. there's literally no innovation the only difference is a slightly different map, UI, and lighting. was pretty shocked, hope these devs can look in to some kind of recourse.

This game have lots more things than I expected. 🟢Pros: Great variety of products and ways to make them or obtain them. You can do alchemy, cultivate, care of cattle for meat, fishing, make your own alcohol, spice, cheese, jam, metals, and cooking. Easy store management too Crops are totally worth it. You have to wait a little but the earnings are great and you fill good about it. 🔴Cons: Very slow progress because buying the products don't give you much. The game pushes you to create everything yourself, but this makes the beginning extremely slow. And that combine with the lack of explanation can be frustrating. (4 hours in and I still don't know how to milk the cow) Crops are great but they depend on the season, and the game does not tell you this. My boyfriend and I spent half our earning on crops, just to realize later that we planted spring seed and they won't grow in winter (it may seem obvious but there are no indicators and we can buy out of season product in the duck, we thought that we could still farm them, but they would take more time) The worst part is that even though we didn't spent all our money, this was a game ending error. Buying products in the dock will give you little to no money, which means you can't progress. We would always remove all furniture and animals before each day so the expenses where lower, and not even that helped. In fact, once we restart the game I would only buy one product from the dock just to earn enough for rent while we waited for crops to grow. I'll still give the game a positive review because it has lots of good things once you pass the beginning phase

Pretty fun. Surprisingly shallow in gameplay, but the price is right Please add a worker that collects items from the dock. --Specific Notes-- Preamble: these are very specific nitpicks. The game is over all very fun and addicting. The maintenance cost is an absolutely abhorrent mechanic. I'm sure there's literally anything else that could replace the design intention... all it does is encourage you to tear down and re-set up your shop everyday. decorate minimally, dont buy upgrades because of rent... the punishments to progressing are a bit odd. Having customers get mad and cost reputation if you have an empty box, yet requiring boxes to be set out for cellar workers to function is mildly irritating. Ultimately though it doesn't matter because all I do is buy 20 boxes of whiskey every day and sell that, and I seem to maintain maximum reputation. The reputation system as a whole is really weird- it doesn't seem to really do anything, except bottleneck you on holidays when people get pissed because you can't supply their rampant needs. I think a reputation system that doesn't decay that has some sort of bonuses based on "shop coolness" would be better. Maybe you can make more money if you have better variety? Would make buying the horrible crops make a lot more sense. On that- the cost balancing of this game is rediculously odd and so random. Turning chilis into spice yields 4x the profit of buying the peppers, yet turning honey into a potion yields 1.3x? The honey potion even costs island flowers. Mint is worth 4x as much as Cumin, yet there exists the same amount on the island to turn into spice. The smithing's returns on investments are absolutely awful as well. I feel like it's balanced around the blacksmith coming to town, but just make the ingredients cost more? Unless they're worried about the junk value of leather and bones, but just reduce that... The recipe balancing is also horrible. Every cow gives you 2 leather and 1 bone, yet there exists only 1 recipe that uses more leather than bones- and no recipe that uses only leather, while there is a recipe that uses only bones. Additionally, there is so much bamboo on the island, yet only the bows use it. Why? the game clearly wants you to use the workshop, yet it costs 10000 just to start it, and then about 10000 per machine? I think a better mechanic would have been to put workshop machines in the shop to have the player have to deal with space management. Because wow space management is not a thing. You have this giant shop, and yet you only need about 2 stands to hold all your goods. Any more beyond that, and youre just burning money on the maintenance fees. Furniture can only be used in the obnoxiously large bedroom. Why? There's all these doo-dads in the deocration store that you have to put on the floor of your shop. The trees are so low to the ground. you have to go inside of there leaves to harvest. Very annoying. The horse's inventory is very annoying to use. And almost purposeless. I stopped using it very quickly. The boat is HORRIFICALLY slow. Good god. The lack of any direction whatsoever is also very interesting- no description of employees, shop upgrades... Why is there no "total expenses?" I gotta pull out the calc' just to know if I'm going into debt. I think overall, if the game chose to focus on small measured decisions rather than bulk "sell as much as possible" it could feel a lot better. More holidays, more price fluctuations, smaller shop, more interactive town. Instead of the holidays being an occasional nuisance, I think it would favor the game a lot to have that be the primary focus of the shop management system.

Relaxing, Cozy, and Addicting. A lot more to this game that you'd think at first glance.

Very fun to play, especially with a friend, and has a ton of ways to run your farm from classics like planting crops, planting trees, raising cattle or fishing to more complex methods like multi-ingredient premium food or even alchemy and smithing. If you think you would like this game because you enjoy this kind of genre, then you'll definitely have a blast. The following is more in-depth, but I have a few problems that I'd like to see addressed after playing the game: 1) some quality of life: The game needs more tooltips in general. You should get remind not to plant crops out of season (you can plant them but they wont grow) Stuff like this could just be put into small "did you know" tips after each successful day when going to sleep. Some mechanics are also a bit unforgiving: Customers will stain the floor, then hilariously immediately complain about it which costs you reputation, forcing you to get an employee rather early if you want to expand unless someone spams down the broom nonstop. Bees should also be explained a bit more easily. 2) the "balancing" is also a bit off, most complex products are just not worth the effort over selling raw cabbage and maybe some meat products. Alcohol and cheese take an entire day to produce which makes it very tedious to plan around them. (Your stuff will go bad because you only need a portion of it, yet it still blocks the production for an entire day) I feel like the game would benefit from a few more incentives than just the festivals to keep things fresh. It wants you to have a wide array of products (or customers will complain), but that's just not realistically feasible with everything going bad in a matter of days + the sheer work behind getting that many products. Maybe a longer shelf life (or some sort of fridge) would help while at the same time having people buy less so that you actually have leftovers and a wider variety of products. Nevertheless though, the game's a ton of fun and I only want to see it keep getting better and better

The game is really fun so far, I really enjoy the low stress vibe of growing and selling fruits and vegetables and catching fish is fun too. However, I really wish they didn't use Ai for some image assets, it really takes away from the game and none of the images are consistent and all look terrible like low res clip art. I really hope in future they replace the Ai slop with real artists work, it will help clean up and polish the game. Having so much fun at least!

The game is genuinely something i have always been looking for, catch fish, farm, tend and butcher animals, do a bit of mining, and create products, all to sell in your store for a profit. the game play loop is great, if it needs a few touch ups, with how base the graphics are (that isn't a bad thing, they are perfect for it) content should be quick to add, and the game has potential to grow exponentially, and i am very looking forward to it

stardew valley x supermarket simulator's love child <3 amazing aesthetic graphics, brilliant content, not very fast paced for a tycoon type game but means more playtime out of your money as always more to do

cool game and you can really dump some hours into how many thing there are to do. main gripe would be the prices need some pretty major balancing, as you progress you kind of end up just letting the store run by itself while you do hours and hours of crafting/farming/mining/fishing which is cool, but it does not feel worth it what so ever compared to boringly buying and selling stock from the dock, which with only 5 inventory slots with the maximum bag, also becomes very monotonous. Still game is very cool and I hope the duo that are making it continue to improve and build on what they've got.

Fun game with friends. Lots of different things to sell. Buy and resell or grow yourself. very casual game with friends.

This game is absolutely insane!! It's so nice to have this sort of cozy sim for multiplayer use. My boyfriend and I LOVE playing!

On the surface, this should've been a relaxing store owner simulation, but this game "punishes" players for their progression. The more you progress, the more menial tasks you should do. The only reward this game offers is the ability to hire employees which ironically freeing us from the-should-be-main gameplay of store-clerking and leaves us with the ultra-tedious job of farming, crafting, mining, fishing, etc. I've spent about 20 minutes to paddle across ocean to mine ores, and another minutes of smelting, only to find the profit I got from the product is almost the same as restocking champagnes which only takes few clicks. Terrible experience.

Fun to play duo for couple hours. Wish it would have more depth with pricings and chains of productions.

I do wish there was a neutral option for steam, but for the benefit of this being a 2 dev job, i'm reccomending it. Old Market Simulator is a good time killer, with upsetingly little substance behind the mechanics it has. Whats there is fun, varied and comes together to form a cohesive gameplay loop, but is very surface level and largely unsatisfying to engage with. The very best indicator of this is the thing you'll be doing the most at the beginning, checking people out at the register. All you do is click on the items, and then on a money pouch. It's functional, but repetitive (not in a good way) and boring. A suggestion for expending this in particular could be something like having a till that you need to input the total of your items on, and then sort coins into. This incentivizes engaging with the pricing mechanic a bit more, remembering what you set a price at, and fleshes out the task a bit more. Think how Schedule 1 handles all their little mini-game tasks. My main message to the devs: The work you're putting in to adding new content is awesome. You clearly love this game and it really shows. My main bit of advice would be to slow down on what you're adding, and flesh out what you already have. Your game is good, it just needs a bit more oomph behind the mechanics, and you'll have a truly satisfying market sim in an old-timey niche that seems to be untapped yet.

While the game is great and I plan to play more, I can't recommend it in good faith because of some glaring issues that I feel ruin the overall experience. First is the events. Every time an event rolls around, my shop rep is destroyed because I don't have the items that the event requires in the store, some of which are well out of reach requiring multiple upgrades to the store just to access like the red bow. Every time the customer says that I don't have the item they're looking for, my rep tanks meaning less customers and wasting several more days to get it back up just to lose it in the next event. I feel like I'm being punished because I want to run a store selling items that I want to sell and not some random stuff some of which I literally can't get at the moment. Second is a more minor gripe. I play with a gamepad because I have some issues using a mouse and keyboard. Got the game because it says that it has controller support and it does. Issue is that for some reason on my game, it shows the mouse and keyboard controls on my HUD instead of the controller glyphs. It sorts itself put eventually, but it's still annoying as hell. Third is the backpack feature. Who in their right mind decided that the backpacks should be that expensive and have just a few slots in them, one of which is taken up by the bag itself. I'm not paying for the top tier back for 2 more slots than the cheapest for multiple times the price. Lastly is the music. Having the same song on a loop got so irritating that I ended up muting it. It goes for a few minutes then immediately starts up again. When I'm sitting back and fishing, I don't want the same repetitive tune playing back to back for the entire time. Even a longer break between the song would be nice, but it just repeats over and over. It was charming for the first hour, but after hearing it over and over, it was borderline torturous. It's a good game, but those issues make it impossible to recommend. It's fun for the most part, but in areas it just feels luckluster at best and lazy at worst.

Its fun to harvest all 50 of my chickens but if you do play this game don't min max to get the most profit because it is so much more fun if you expirience all the game has to offer

Just barley scratched the surface of this game, but i absolutely love it. Im having a blast playing this with my BF. highly recommend it for anyone looking for a merchant sim

I've played many games similar to this one, but this is the one that keeps pulling me back. It's charming and there are lots of different commodities to create/source your market with. The 2 maps vary up the gameplay enough to warrant replaying it if you feel your market has topped out. Highly recommend it! The only downside to this game is a the lack of Steam Cloud, as a SteamDeck user this would be the perfect game to play on a train/plane or bus. But as of right now, there is no way to carry on with your existing game save on the move. Hopefully the dev adds this soon, as they did mention they were looking into it over a year ago on the community page.

Great little game for a great price. Totally recommended.

This game scratches the itch to run your own market. Start off small, fully customizable with many types of displays and decorations, which you can place wherever you like in your market. The grind is JUST enough to keep you hooked without burning out. Upgrades including more product types, farm expansions, barn expansions, cellar expansions and market expansions. Hire employees to do the "mundane" tasks while you get the important stuff done! All in all, this game has a better grip on me than most shop sims I've played, don't miss out!

Really cute and fun! It's charming. You can tell the developers put a lot of love into this game.

This game is simple, fun and chill. It is also have many various feature that can be explore by players.

Stunning simulator game that has everything ~ Pro Tip: Put boxes in the shredder at the junkman for extra cash!

Great game with quite a lot of depth and different strategies to build the best old market. This game has a lot to offer and still so much more potential. It is very simplistic yet challenging.

Dont buy it, completely unfinished, refund speed run simulator, zero explanations, zero tutorials, zero optimization, perfect if it was an early pre-alpha state, just DONT buy this lazy work.

A very satisfying market simulator! I can sense there is a LOT of depth here. Selling bread and potatoes on day one is only a fraction of what's under the hood here. Excited to keep playing and discovering! I played this on my YouTube channel! https://youtu.be/ZGa5snTQNPw

A lot of fun! A few updates until it's polished but love the direction it's going in!

A little slow in the beginning, but still fun while you progress!

The world feels and is empty, cant sell flowers or herbs. that are around you. Not even the bamboo plants. Have to order things, and its not beginner friendly. I feel the game needs more.

I do not feel that having a 2 person dev team justifies calling this a "full-release game" when there is a mind-boggling amount of hostile design choices and is glaringly unfinished in the first 30min of playtime. There is a difference between not babying your players with excessive handholding and actively leading them deeper into a garbage pile labyrinth. Questions that stuck in my mind: - Why does my "house" just have an open wall instead of a doorway and door? Devoid of furniture and function except for a lone single bed. My bed might as well just be outside in the dreary snow. Odd vibe. - Why the fuck should I buy a horse (as the tooltip is suggesting I do) when I can barely afford to buy stock to fill my shelves? The map is tiny. Where would I put it and what the hell would it do other than cost me in hay to feed? - Why can I not seem to sell things I have foraged nor store them anywhere? Am I supposed to just ignore any gatherables till I have unlocked the workshop, bought the related processing machine and/or bought the licence to purchase the processed item?? I can't seem to find placeable storage being sold anywhere. - Why is the layout of this "town" so confusing? If you need 20 street signs to direct players around such a small area then it's not very well laid out. How do I keep losing which side of the building my shop is? - Why are the players not given explanations about the game systems so they can chose how to prioritise their time and resources? For a game about simulating managing a market, there is too little information given to the player for them to manage. This game is clearly not for me but I also wouldn't wish this confusing mess on any of my friends. It doesn't have enough quality of life features to make it functional nor is it exciting/beautiful enough to make it enjoyable (except the water, it is strangely gorgeous). The prices are too high, maintenance costs unreasonable, and player actions unstreamlined. I'm sorry Devs, you may have put in a lot of effort into this project and there may be plenty of "late game content" that I don't know about, but I couldn't get through the clunky beginning to see any more of this game or even muster the desire to try the other map... I just can't.

you can pop cows into several pieces of meat in an instant and sell cabbage for what seems to be illegal amounts of currency

The game is extremely dark when you get in. It's winter immediately, without any fun vibrant colors of the game. It's slow, uninspired, and generally not a pleasant experience. For some, it might be fun, but it was not that fun for me. Management is stock, press E to cash out, over and over again. Run to this area for fetch quest, run to another. I was really disappointed in it immediately.

so far it is kinda fun. im sure it will get better if the devs keep adding and growing.

Super cosy! Great game to play with friends!

Great game, lots of fun.

What is easier, fishing for a mending book, or a baby shark?

YES. I LIKE THIS GAME. It reminds me a lot of Schedule 1

A lot to do keeps you busy. Definitely recommend.

chilling game I recommended

Much much better than most coop sim games

how to safe this game

best game ever

So far, sick af

The game is great

Great game!

They crave my goods

i like it exept taxes

Very Good

god

Old market